John watched. The sky had warmed from dark green
to a burnished bronze, the color of age. Over the plain the spires inside
the research station seemed sharp and clear, yet unimaginably remote
across the distance of graying sand. The sky sucked color from the ground;
green lay only on the edges of the dunes. The hollows were ashen.

Someone had told John this plain had once been an ocean. He tried to
imagine waves covering the dark ground, but the effort made him sick.
He was not even aware of his own sweat, and he sometimes felt light
enough to float. Water was starting to seem like poison.

"Bowl," the crone said suddenly. Her voice cracked out of the long
silence like one of the fissures in the hardened clay of the desert
floor.

He jerked his head toward her. Her profile was almost entirely collapsed
around the bones of her skull. Her eyes were far recessed. He had not
seen her lips move, and her face was still now. But the voice had come
from her.

He could not see a bowl anywhere. The tent was open on all sides; there
was no place to hide.

"Break," said the boy behind John. He tossed a glass bead into the
eye socket of a lizard skull.

The crone was silent.

"Carry. Fill. Paint. Make. Roll." The boy tripped the words out so
quickly, John could hardly follow.

John willed himself not to move. Light was failing rapidly. With the
tips of his fingers he coded notes into his personal data unit. He was
so well-practiced at this he hardly thought about it.

The boy speaks only in verbs. Woman-thing persists in using single
nouns. He defies her.

Now why had he said that? The boy stood up, overturning his seat, which
proved to be a hollowed shell rather like a tortoise's. In the boy's
hands it molded into a simple bowl, a large smooth thing of symmetry.
John wondered if he should delete the last sentence of his entry. Under
the eyes of the boy the bowl began to fill with water. John could smell
it.

Hypothesis: observer witnessing some manifestation in physical terms
of sandwriting language. Each has some role. Are they physically present
or not?

Still, the sense of defiance. He stared at the boy's hands, at the
lovely lines of tendons and veins under the skin, the graceful long
fingers.

He had never expected them to seem so human. How could the woman, awkward
and misshapen, squatting on the dark sand, belong to the same species
as the boy? And this was to say nothing of the third. Three of their
kind were present, but after one glance at it when he first had startled
out of a vague sun-dream to notice the three of them and the shade of
their tent, John had avoided looking at the last. He had blocked out
the part of his vision that contained it, and the pile of mats on which
it lay.

"Not everyone has the stomach for this planet, John," Elaine had told
him. As the research station psychiatrist, she had treated people for
a variety of personality disorders that seemed obscurely linked to the
appearance of the sandwriting. Until John had come, no one could read
the markings, although everyone in the domed station had seen the lines
and shapes creep into existence on the desert sands as though written
by invisible hands. The writing hadn't been translated, but its manifestations
had coincided with unexplained incidents among the Station personnel:
violent nightmares at the least, and in two cases, psychotic episodes
and followed by suicide.

"Language is the key to xenopsychology," John had told her when he
arrived, eight months ago, on special assignment to help the research
station cope with the problem. The researchers had not been prepared
to run into conflicts with aboriginal ecology: the planet had been lifeless
for several thousand years. But John had set to work translating the
sandwriting into human terms, and so had begun an uneasy dialog with
someone--or something.

"Language creates reality," John had continued, wanting to make Elaine
understand why his work was important. "It's like, when you are American
and you learn to think in Japanese, you don't think the same thoughts.
This is just more extreme. Other species have other languages. When
we learn them we enter into their subjective experience of reality.
Maybe people see the sandwriting, get a glimpse of the alien nature
of the language, and experience the kind of contact shock humans always
experience when encountering an alien intelligence. And that's where
the psychiatric problems come in."

"It's a touch far-fetched," Elaine had replied. "For one thing, what
makes you so sure that it is a language? This is a dead planet.
You need an intelligent species to produce a language."

"Humans are an intelligent species," John had said, thinking aloud.

"Are you saying that the sandwriting is some kind of... I don't know...
some kind of manifestation of the collective unconscious? Don't tell
me Jung is coming back into vogue after all these years!"

"It's a funny thing," John had mused. "Someone has to start a language,
but once it's going it kind of perpetuates itself. The sandwriting language
could be a relic left over from some earlier civilization, and now that
we're here ... well, I'm not certain. Imagine that a dead species left
behind its way of thinking, as the Egyptians left their architecture.
And now, any mind will do--this language acts on the substratum of memory
and becomes self-propagating."

He remembered Elaine's nervous laugh. "Now you make it sound... alive.
Almost like a virus."

That had been an interesting metaphor. John had just started thinking
about the possibilities in it when Elaine grabbed her notebook. "So,
tell me," she asked casually, "just how long have you been thinking
in these terms?"

"Bowl water," said the crone.

The boy looked at the floor and said, "spillthrowdrinkforgetgivepissitflyseecoverunmake--"

"Bowlwater," she interrupted. The boy glared at her.

"Spill throw drink--"

"What comfort?" This was the first time John had heard its voice: the
third. Reluctantly John turned his eyes to the mats on the floor. "What
hope?" It was a cool, deep, male voice, eminently reasonable in tone.
John shivered, dry-skinned in the heat. He could not bear to look at
this one. His insides twisted. He felt if it spoke to him, he would
have to obey.

"Give," said the boy grudgingly.

"Bowlwater."

He gave it to her.

Sentient Baby has command power over others, John noted tersely.
Subjective horror, observer.

Sentient Baby? Again he wondered at his own notes. He looked at #3
to see if the description fit. It looked back. John cringed. He couldn't
help it.

"Why?" said Baby, to him.

It makes no sense that I can understand them. I shouldn't be able
to. What language am I hearing?

The crone took the bowl and set it in front of her. She held up her
hands, palms facing each other a few inches apart.

Sentient Baby speaks only in questions, John remembered to note.
He felt dizzy, and noted that. The tent was almost dark. Outside the
sand seemed to be glowing a dark, dead green.

Trying to translate the sandwriting into something
he could comprehend had been the greatest challenge of John's career.
He had gotten in the habit of standing on the sand outside the research
dome waiting for the signs to appear, and then trying to interact by
stenciling in his own responses to the language in the sand. This was
how he had learned to translate it. "There's no such thing as 'translation,'
really," he'd explained to Elaine. "We actually translate ourselves
into the other language." And that was what he had been doing. But his
progress was slow, and he could not share it with anyone because he
had no objective information to impart. So he had tried to develop a
structure. In the course of doing this he noticed contradictions of
meaning. He had struggled with the fact that the sign for "womb" seemed
to be the same as the sign used for "desert."

He remembered thinking that it was ironic to associate fertility with
the sterile desert. He'd copied the womb/desert sign in the sand and
spent a long time thinking about it, wondering how--or if--the sandwriters
had reproduced.

To his astonishment, the sandwriting that came up the next morning
stretched in a long line across the desert, leading away from the domed
station. He had never had a clearer invitation. He arranged for a survival
kit, but first he had to clear his exit from the dome with Elaine, who
he knew blamed some factor in the atmosphere for the outbreak of madness.
Because of this, he had always been surprised that she had even entertained
his speculations about the sandwriting at all. She seemed to expend
most of her energy trying to restrict people from any contact with the
planet's environment. He was amazed when she agreed to give him clearance
to leave the dome for an extended period.

"It could be quite dangerous, John," Elaine had said. "And I don't
want to advise you to go. You already spent too much time outside. However...
it's so critical that we find out what's causing our people these behavioral
aberrations. Hydrophobia, hearing voices, violence. Maybe if you go,
we can learn something."

John didn't really trust her--she was a psychiatrist, after all, and
kept trying to get into his head--but he hadn't had time to work out
her motives for letting him go. He had a trail to follow.

The sandwriting had teased him along for miles across the plain before
it stopped altogether. He had tried to translate it even as he followed;
but it traveled too fast and he couldn't keep up with its meaning. Sandwriting
appeared swiftly and decayed even faster. The slightest wind could obscure
the markings. When finally the trail stopped, he found himself far from
the dome with no clue as to what to expect. So he waited, and he watched.
He didn't want to go back to the station without accomplishing something
concrete, something he could show to Elaine and say, "Here, this is
science."

He ought to be laughing about that aspiration by now. Here he was,
surrounded by shadow-creatures he had no way to document; witnessing
his own mind bend to their will. A dedicated professional to the last.

The crone was moving her hands back and forth, as if she were rubbing
something that couldn't be seen. John was fascinated, despite himself.
His fingers had begun encoding his thoughts automatically, without his
conscious effort.

His fingers tapped out the transmission. They would come for him. They
would have to come for him. He made himself picture the domed station
in his mind like a buoy, the sandblown glass and the pointed towers.
Please. The crone's hands were twisting and rolling now, slick
and dark with slime, but John couldn't see what she was holding. There
was a fierce, sickening smell in the tent.

Unpeople unspeak unliving ghost.

John saw the boy go to the bowl and put his face against the water.
Todrink, to drink... John almost swooned with desire.
He wanted to know if-- "Do you believe you are one being?" Sentient
Baby asked.

The question eaters are absorbing my mind. The sentient baby devours.
See its crumbling fangs. Here it comes. Birthright.

With a stricken sense of déjà vu, John watched the crone
place the mass she had been holding on the sand. It was a twisted, soft,
creeping thing, like a lizard turned inside out. He saw the dark sand
cling to its flesh, if flesh was what it was. He saw the moisture hovering
around it as radiance.

The crone looked straight at him from her withered eyes. "Toad," she
said. "Wombtoad. Desertoad."

"Understand?" hissed Sentient Baby, and he didn't.

The crone made gestures over the lizard and John watched it slowly
crawl away from the tent, into the fierce heat and the darkness.

The boy lay on the floor. His lips touched the water again. John was
now unable to move, to think of anything to put in his data coder. He
wanted the water, he wanted it.

"Die," said the boy. "Drink. Forget. Go."

John closed his eyes. He felt it when the boy's tongue touched the
water, when his throat and mouth sucked it up, when it burst down his
throat and into his body. It filled the boy and John as one: he swelled
with it, heavy and dense, suddenly pregnant and docile and serene. John
found himself looking directly at Sentient Baby: it rippled within its
own skin, shrinking before his eyes until it was the size of a stumpy
worm. Then, with a pop like a piece of computer animation, Sentient
Baby was gone. The tent and the others in it were shucked cleanly away
from his awareness.

He was larger than the planet, and he looked down inside himself and
saw an ocean under golden light. He saw plant life and reptiles swimming
in the sea. But his attention flickered, and when he looked again he
saw only desert. He "remembered" the lizards dying in the heat and felt
their thirst. Then he was following the small lizard that the Crone
had made, watching it move slowly across the dark sand.

Two: Not animals. We are a kind of meaning that doesn't happen to
belong to you.

One: We don't claim ownership of you.

Two: All you have done since you came is crowd us out.

One: You weren't alive to be crowded--

Two: You fill yourselves and the world with reports, records, transmissions,
memos, stories, conversations, songs.... Our syntax is disrupted.
Your language violates us. You think to squeeze us out.

One: We don't seek to harm you! We're a research station. We're
excited that you're here. Well, I'm excited. We just want to
know.

Two: Yes, your species is one enormous question. We have no tolerance
of questions, for questions are about escaping death, and death precedes
us. Death gives birth to us: questions, like water, like life, pollute
us. You will see this. We are showing you what was, and what
will be. All of you will be assimilated into our language now, or leave
this planet and take your questions with you. We will have no sentient
babies polluting our world.

One: But Sentient Baby is one of you...

Two: No. You are Sentient Baby, human question.

One: I won't listen to you anymore.

Two: You asked the question, and we have eaten you. You wanted
to see our reproductive process. Now you will experience it.
Watch the desert toad. We made it to let it die, just as our hosts perished
long ago. Water-drinkers, like humans. But water ispoison to
us. We are the language that the death of our hosts gave liberty to,
and now we will not be captured by your kind. You are bodies. Bodies
are traps. Go tell your people that we will attack their minds as long
as their language attacks us. We will kill your language if we
must.

One: No. Language is part of what we are. It is what we
are. You Can't have it. You can't have mine.

He felt the space in his head clear for a moment, as though he had
shaken off the voices, but he was still aware of the oppressive weight
of the sand. writing language hovering over, like some great claw poised
to strike. Assimilated, he thought. Have I been assimilated?

Then he thought of an empty city, and words written in sand, and he
realized, as if from a great distance but also as if it should have
been obvious: they meant to kill him. They meant to kill everyone.

In a last desperate gesture in which he was himself and himself alone,
he tried to reach out, to touch a feeling person.

Elaine, Elaine, it's not like anything we have known.

He imagined the dark sand scored with signs only he could read, and
the bleak city, but he could think of nothing more.

After a long time, he felt the weight of awareness sink back into his
cramped body, and he realized he was staring into darkness. The sand
still glowed faintly, but the hut was gone. The empty lizard shell that
the boy had used lay in front of him. He was alone.

Just on the edge of his vision, something moved. He heard small sounds
on the sand. Moving slowly, clumsy after prolonged stillness, he crept
toward the movement. Even without clear light he knew it was the newborn
toad. The glistening, grotesque creature lay gasping on the sand, a
twisted scrap of life. The imminence of its end was like a sound in
the air. He felt the moment go through him, felt the small sorrow of
it as it struggled, convulsed; and in a few seconds it died before his
eyes. The unfulfillment of this struck at him in some deep, soft place,
and he began to shake with dry sobs.

The hovercraft crew spotted John at dawn, having
scoured the plains all night for some sign. They found him lying on
the sand surrounded by cryptic markings, clutching a concave piece of
shell. He was in shock, and a medical team came to retrieve him.

After a time he woke up, thinking he recognized the cool, composed
woman who bent over him, saying, "Good work, John," and smoothed his
brow.

"Are they coming for us yet?" he said to her urgently.

She gave a gentle little half-smile, said, "Let's not talk right now,
okay? They say you should drink as much as you can--you're still dehydrated.
Here."

A smoky-colored tube filled with pale-pink liquid. A straw.

She thought he looked at it strangely, almost fearfully.

She turned away and made a note of this. Possible hydrophobia following
exposure. Symptoms revealed in computer analysis of personal field notes:
paranoia, physical disorientation, hallucinations, aural hallucinations,
loss of identity recognition, obsession with death. After early exposure
prior to final episode, subject displayed signs of obsessive thinking
and reduced professional standards evidenced by a willingness to invent
arbitrary stories to explain subject's personal hypothesis.

Early results of study indicate that atmospheric conditions are
solely responsible for the breakdown of this subject. If extrapolated
to affect other victims, it is seen that the colony will be best served
by the isolation of the chemical factor in the environment that has
attacked our colonists. However, there is nothing to indicate research
on this planet should be abandoned.

Elaine could hardly wait to write up this study for publication. It
would make her career. She realized that John probably thought it would
make his career; unfortunately, it had done just the opposite.
Even if he recovered, he would never be taken seriously again. Just
another popular scientist, giving in to some antediluvian sense of guilt
that human industry was taking over this dead planet, raping it somehow.

Some people, she told herself, have a deep need to create meaning,
even where there is none. And that's how we get into these situations.

She looked down on John again.

He had drifted into a doze, in which he was racing over the desert,
his whole self unfurled like a banner. She watched his eyes moving beneath
their lids. He murmured something in his dream, and she leaned down
to hear it.

"You will be assimilated," he whispered.

Elaine paused and glanced around the room. No one else was there. Casually,
she took off her lab coat and dropped it over the odd-shaped lizard
skull John had been clutching when they found him, curled up half dead.
She tucked the bundle under her arm. It wasn't really evidence of anything,
she told herself. Skeletons had been. found in the dust before.

She slid the file under her arm, too: the one labeled Subject 14M.
Then she straightened and turned away, smiling.

Outside, the sand continued to move, arranging itself in inexplicable
patterns.